$111 Million Investment For Project Canary Unveils The Need For Accurate Emissions Data

$111 Million Investment For Project Canary Unveils The Need For Accurate Emissions Data

The ESG data and continuous emissions monitoring tech provider, Project Canary, announced a staggering $111 million Series B funding round as a follow-up to its $10 million Series A Funding in April 2021. The lead investor for the Series B round was Insight Partners, together with Brookfield Growth, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPP Investments), Carica Sustainable Investments and Quantum Energy Partners, Energy Impact Partners, and Frontier Venture Capital.

The Denver-based data analytics company was founded in 2018 and entered the market as a provider of real-time continuous emissions monitoring solutions and ESG certifications of responsible energy operations. How does the technology differ from other offerings? Firms can leverage Project Canary’s IoT enabled device, Climate X, to track methane emissions, volatile organic compound and fugitive emissions. The data is collected continuously and then aggregated in a SaaS software solution, enabling customers to access it and monitor fluctuations in emissions real-time. This is a step ahead from the hardware-based Continuous Emissions Management Systems (CEMS) solutions, which are more mature in the market.

With more and more asset-intensive companies pledging to achieve net-zero by 2050, such as Shell, ExxonMobil and BP, firms must shift away from calculated emissions to real-time measurements, which are essential to demonstrate progress on their roadmap to decarbonisation. Recently, Project Canary partnered with Chevron to measure its environmental performance in the Permian Basin in Texas and Colorado using Climate X, under Project Canary’s Trustwell certification program, which covers several ESG metrics to certify responsible energy supply chain operators. However, partnerships with oil and gas providers are not new to Project Canary. Oil providers such as EQT are leveraging data from Project Canary to offset emissions from gas. The recent investment will support the development of Project Canary’s technology and application to other emission-intensive industries, for which regulatory pressure, especially in Europe, is expected to tighten in the next few years.

The recent developments after COP26 on Article 6 will drive carbon offset demand towards high-quality projects, with a strong focus on traceability and transparency. Not surprisingly, Project Canary’s $111 million investment is the largest of a series of fundraising aimed to support emissions data providers. Another fundraising example in this market comes from GHGSat, a satellite-based GHG emissions monitoring provider, who closed a series B funding at $45M in July last year.

Investments in high-quality emissions monitoring solutions providers play a key role in developing solutions to support carbon reduction and net-zero strategies. The size of the funding for Project Canary sends a clear message on the need for transparent, more granular data.